Apple TV 3.0 Software With Redesigned User Interface

Apple introduced new Apple TV® 3.0 software featuring a redesigned main menu that makes navigating your favorite content simpler and faster, and makes enjoying the largest selection of on-demand HD movie rentals and purchases, HD TV shows, music and podcasts from the iTunes® Store even better on your TV.

You can now enjoy iTunes Extras and iTunes LP in stunning fullscreen with your Apple TV, as well as listen to Genius Mixes and Internet radio through your home theater system. The new Apple TV software is available immediately free of charge to existing Apple TV owners, and Apple TV with 160GB capacity is available for just $229.

“The new software for Apple TV features a simpler and faster interface that gives you instant access to your favorite content,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “HD movies and HD TV shows from iTunes have been a huge hit with Apple TV customers, and with Apple TV 3.0 they get great new features including iTunes Extras, Genius Mixes and Internet radio.”

The redesigned main menu on Apple TV gives you instant access to your favorite content. Recently rented or purchased movies, as well as other content including TV shows, music, podcasts, photos and YouTube, are accessible directly from the new main menu. The new software also allows Apple TV users to enjoy stunning fullscreen iTunes Extras and iTunes LP, including great new movie titles such as “Star Trek” or classics like “The Wizard of Oz” and albums such as Taylor Swift’s “Fearless (Platinum Edition)” and Jack Johnson’s “En Concert.” iTunes Extras gives movie fans great additional content such as deleted scenes, interviews and interactive galleries. iTunes LP is the next evolution of the music album, delivering a rich, immersive experience for select albums on the iTunes Store by combining beautiful design with expanded visual features like live performance videos, lyrics, artwork, liner notes, interviews, photos, album credits and more.

Now Apple TV users can enjoy Genius Mixes through their home theater system and listen to up to 12 endless mixes of songs that go great together, automatically generated from their iTunes library. Customers can also enjoy Internet radio, allowing them to browse and listen to thousands of Internet radio stations, as well as tag favorite stations to listen to later. Apple TV’s support of HD photos is enhanced with iPhoto Events, which simplifies finding your favorite photos on Apple TV, as well as iPhoto® Faces, which gives access to photos organized by people identified in iPhoto.

Apple TV users have direct access to a catalog of over 8,000 Hollywood films on iTunes including over 2,000 in stunning HD video available for rent or purchase. Users can also choose from a selection of 11 million songs, 10,000 music videos and over 50,000 TV episodes to purchase directly from their Apple TV or browse and enjoy the iTunes Store podcast directory of over 175,000 free video and audio podcasts. Purchases downloaded to Apple TV are automatically synced back to iTunes on the user’s computer for enjoyment on their Mac® or PC or all current generation iPods or iPhones.* iPod touch® or iPhone® users can download the free Remote app from the App Store to control their Apple TV with a simple tap or flick of the finger.

Pricing & Availability

The new Apple TV software is available as a free automatic download to all Apple TV customers. The 160GB Apple TV is available from the Apple Store®, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $229 (US). Apple TV requires an 802.11b/g/n wireless network or 10/100 Base-T Ethernet networking, a broadband Internet connection and a high definition widescreen TV. Video availability varies by country.

Apple TV easily connects to a broad range of widescreen TVs and home theater systems and comes standard with HDMI, component video, analog and optical audio ports. Using high-speed Wi-Fi, Apple TV automatically plays your iTunes content without setup or management.

*Movie rentals work on iPod classic®, iPod nano® with video, iPod touch, iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS.

Read more...

Google Introduced AdWords Comparison Ads Making Comparison Of Multiple, Relevant Offers More Easy

Google announced a new feature of AdWords called AdWords Comparison Ads, which lets users compare multiple, relevant offers more easily. Comparison Ads is part of Google’s continuing effort to make ads more relevant and useful to users and to help you, advertisers, reach the people who are most interested in your products and services.

AdWords uses a host of targeting and relevancy signals to determine the best ads for each query. However, sometimes a user's query doesn't provide enough information to confidently predict what they want. For example, users who search for "mortgage." Do they want a new home loan or a refinance? Do they want a fixed rate or an adjustable rate loan? Comparison Ads improves the ad experience on Google.com by letting users specify exactly what they are looking for and helping them quickly compare relevant offers side by side.

With Comparison Ads, you can also target your offers at a more granular level, leading to more valuable, qualified leads. To see how it works, let's use mortgage example. Users searching for "mortgage" on Google.com may see a promotion from Comparison Ads prompting them to select the type of loan they are looking for and to compare various rates.

If they click the promotion, users are taken to a page with more detailed sponsored results. They can choose directly from the offers listed on that page, or they can further refine their search by providing additional information like income and home value. By giving users the ability to refine their search on a number of relevant attributes, it can show more targeted ads and provide more valuable leads.

Once users find an offer that matches their specific needs, they can either call you directly or request a quote. If a user requests a quote, Google automatically anonymizes the user's phone number and sends you a unique code that you can use to contact the user. You only pay if a user calls the phone number on your offer or fills out a form to request a quote.

While Comparison Ads is still an early-stage feature, Google has focused on a number of ways to enhance the user experience:

• Speed -- Comparison Ads shows targeted offers in less than a second. There are no long forms for users to fill out - Users see specific offers immediately and only need to fill in additional information if they wish to further refine their results.
• Transparency -- Comparison Ads only shows real products. There are no teaser rates, or bait and switch offers. Comparison Ads also standardizes the information presented to users, making it easy for them to sort and compare offers on a side by side basis.
• Privacy -- Comparison Ads won't send advertisers any user information, including anonymized phone numbers, unless the user explicitly requests more information about an advertiser's offer.

At this time, Comparison Ads will only show to a small number of users in select U.S. states and is only available to a limited number of advertisers in the mortgage/refinance space. Over time, Google will increase the number of users who see Comparison Ads offers as well as the number of advertisers able to participate.

Read more...

Twitter Is Going To Add Support For More Language

Twitter is growing very fast. Twitter is currently available only in English and Japanese. To attract more users, twitter will soon be rolling out support for French, Italian, German, and Spanish. These languages are commonly referred to using the acronym FIGS and are often the starting point for services like Twitter when its time for more language support.

Later, Twitter will add support for several other languages. Starting from yesterday, Twitter is offering a simple tool for people with experience in other languages to suggest translations for the Twitter web site.

Twitter is inviting a small group of people to become volunteer translators at first. As more folks volunteer, the translation suggestions should accumulate faster and then there will be enough material to respond by making Twitter available not only in English and Japanese but also French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

Twitter will distribute the translations to Twitter platform developers making it easier for them to offer multiple language support as well.

Read more...

Amazon Lowers Kindle Price to $259 & Introduces New Addition to the Kindle Family of Wireless Reading Devices

Amazon.com, Inc. today announced that it is lowering the price of its #1 bestseller Kindle to $259, down from $299. Also today, Amazon.com introduced a new addition to its family of portable reading devices - Kindle with U.S. & International Wireless. Kindle with U.S. & International Wireless now enables readers to wirelessly download content in over 100 countries and territories.

Readers can pre-order Kindle with U.S. & International Wireless starting today for $279 at www.amazon.com/kindle and it ships October 19. 

“Kindle is the most wished for, the most gifted, and the #1 bestselling product across the millions of items we sell on Amazon, and we’re excited to be able to lower the price,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “We’re also excited to announce a new addition to the Kindle family—Kindle with global wireless.  At home or abroad in over 100 countries, you can think of a book and download it wirelessly in less than 60 seconds.”

Kindle wirelessly downloads books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution 6-inch electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper. Kindle utilizes the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so you never need to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot or sync with a PC. Readers can wirelessly shop the Kindle Store, download books in less than 60 seconds, automatically receive newspaper and magazine subscriptions, receive personal documents, and read from their library—now in over 100 countries and territories.

“Kindle has revolutionized the way we purchase and read books, by making it mobile, easy and intuitive,” said Randall Stephenson, chairman and chief executive officer of AT&T. “We are excited to work with Amazon to help readers access books even faster and from significantly more places than ever before, including more than 100 countries and territories around the world through AT&T’s global wireless coverage.”

The U.S. Kindle Store (www.amazon.com/kindlestore) now has more than 350,000 books, including New Releases and 104 of 112 New York Times Bestsellers, which are typically $9.99 or less.  More than 75,000 books have been added to the U.S. Kindle Store in just the last five months. Starting today, Lonely Planet guides are now available in the Kindle Store, joining existing travel guide selection from publishers Rick Steves, Frommers and Michelin.

“Lonely Planet is excited to make a vast selection of travel guides from Australia to Zanzibar available to Kindle customers around the world,” said Lonely Planet CEO Matt Goldberg.  “Travelers can now pack as many Lonely Planet guides as they want into Kindle’s 10.2 ounces and download new guides wirelessly while travelling around the world.”

Over 50 top U.S. and international newspapers such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Times (UK), Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Shanghai Daily are available in the Kindle Store for single purchase or subscription, and can now be delivered wirelessly in over 100 countries and territories. Over 35 top magazines, such as The Economist, Newsweek, Time, The New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Forbes, Fortune, PC Magazine, and The New England Journal of Medicine are also available for single purchase or subscription, and can also be delivered wirelessly in the U.S. and abroad. U.S. Kindle customers can also continue to take advantage of the Kindle Store’s selection of over 7,000 blogs and receive new posts while traveling overseas.

Kindle with U.S. & International Wireless offers customers the same features that have helped make Kindle with U.S. Wireless the #1 bestselling product on Amazon.com, including:

• Slim and Trim: At just over a third of an inch thin (0.36 inches) and weighing just over 10 ounces, Kindle is pencil thin and lighter than a typical paperback.

• Reads Like Real Paper: Kindle’s 6-inch electronic ink display reads like printed words on paper because the screen works using real ink and doesn’t use a backlight, eliminating the eyestrain and glare associated with other electronic displays.

• Stores Up To 1,500 Books: Kindle’s 2 GB of memory holds up to 1,500 books and Kindle books are automatically backed up by Amazon so customers can re-download titles from their library.

• Read For Weeks On A Single Charge: Kindle’s electronic ink display sips battery power so users can read for over two weeks with wireless turned off and up to four days on a single charge with wireless on.

• Read-To-Me: With the experimental Text-To-Speech feature, Kindle can read most newspapers, magazines, blogs, and books out loud.

• Automatically Syncs With Kindle and Kindle Compatible Devices: Amazon’s “Whispersync” technology automatically syncs customers’ last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights across Kindle with U.S. & International Wireless, Kindle with U.S. Wireless, Kindle DX, and Kindle compatible devices like Kindle for iPhone.

• Wirelessly Receive and Read Personal Documents:  Wirelessly send, receive, and read personal documents in a variety of formats such as Microsoft Word and PDF.

• Instant Dictionary Lookup:  Kindle comes with the New Oxford American Dictionary and over 250,000 definitions that appear instantly at the bottom of the page.

• Choose Text Size:  Kindle lets readers customize their reading preference by providing six different text sizes.

• Bookmarks, Notes, and Highlights:  By using the QWERTY keyboard Kindle users can add annotations to text, as well as highlight and clip key passages and bookmark pages for future use.

Kindle with U.S. & International Wireless will be available for shipment to customers in over 100 countries around the world on October 19.  Media can visit the Kindle Media Room at http://www.amazon.com/pr/kindle for additional media resources and to request an interview.

Related  Article:

• Amazon Kindle Got Bigger Screen with Kindle DX

Read more...

Skype Rolls Out Business Funded Click-to-Call

Skype today announced a new business funded click-to-call product and a strategic partnership with European Directories that will turn online search for businesses into calls for businesses.

Skype's business funded click-to-call delivers great value and convenience by making it easier and free for consumers who are using Skype to call local businesses they search for anywhere on the internet. A call that is funded by a business will be highlighted with a blue "Free Call" button that appears anywhere online where a phone number is displayed, including search engines, internet yellow pages or local search sites. This automatic phone number recognition allows Skype's more than 480 million registered users to call a participating business for free. Calls that are not funded by a business can still be connected via Skype, but at a low cost charged to the Skype user.

The partnership between Skype and European Directories will offer consumers free calls to up to 700,000 businesses across Europe. Participating European Directories advertisers will have the opportunity to be highlighted with Skype's blue "Free Call" button anywhere their number appears on the internet.

"Partnering with European Directories is a key part of bringing our new business funded click-to-call product to market and providing advertisers with solutions that can help them connect with customers in new and innovative ways," said Don Albert, GM and VP of Americas and Advertising for Skype. "When a call is free and only one click away, we believe it can have a positive impact for a business because there are fewer barriers to start a call. That can result in more qualified leads, more engagement, and possibly a higher rate of conversion for a business."

"This partnership is a great example of our evolution from a print centric company to one truly focused on lead generation. By working with Skype, European Directories can now offer its advertisers leads from yet another source in addition to existing channels such as mobile applications, print publications, our own online search sites and those of our partners. The new Skype 'Free Call' button will turn search for businesses into calls and leads for businesses. It will make our advertisers stand out from competition everywhere on the internet, including in search engines," said Cornel Riklin, CEO of European Directories.

"Skype is in a unique position with more than 480 million global subscribers that use it to make free and cheap calls," said Michael Boland, Analyst and Program Director for BIA/Kelsey. "Working with European Directories to drive calls to its local advertisers is a natural extension, and a revenue diversification move that taps into the $31 billion global Yellow Pages market."

Skype's business funded click-to-call product requires a user to have the latest version of Skype for Windows 4.1 and the latest Skype browser plug-ins in order for the blue "Free Call" button to be displayed. To download Skype for Windows 4.1, visit http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows/.

Read more...

What Is A Browser ?

Web browser is one of the most-used programs on computers. Lots of our time each day is spent online, and every page on the web is experienced through the browser. Unfortunately, most people don't realize that there are many browsers out there, which differ on features like speed, security and extensibility.

Jason Toff, associate product marketing manager at Google conducted a survey of friends to know what they think about web browser. He got the following results:

He has created a one minute video to understand what are web browsers:

He has also created a simple site, WhatBrowser.org, that gives even more information about browsers. On this site, you can see which web browser you're using, explore links to browser diagnostic tests and read some useful tips for getting the most out of your browser.

Read more...

Google Trends With Google Search

Google released a new web search feature which will help to stay in touch with latest trends on the web. Google trends is now part of google web search. Google Hot Trends lists the fastest rising searches on the web at any given hour. Now, when you search Google.com and your query matches one of the top 100 fastest-rising search terms, it will show you a graph at the bottom of page, with more information - like how popular the query is, how fast it's rising over time, and other useful data.

Below is a picture of what you'd find today if you searched for william h macy, which is the top in google trends today (But make sure you search for these examples today - nothing stays hot for long.)

Google has also reduced the number of trends listed on the Google Hot Trends homepage to 40 from 100. This feature, however, will show up for any query that matches the top 100. This new feature is available in the U.S. and Japan.

Read more...

Contribute Helpful Information To Any Webpage With Google Sidewiki

When you are searching for some topic and arrived to some webpage. After going through that webpage, you find that you can add some more useful information on that topic which will help others who are looking for the same information.

What if everyone had an easy way of sharing their insights with you about any page on the web? What if you could add your own insights for others who are passing through?

Now you can. Google announced Sidewiki, which allows you to contribute helpful information next to any webpage. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page.

Rather than showing most recent entries first, it shows most relevant entries first. Google ranks Sidewiki entries using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries in real-time. It will also take your entry about the current page and show it next to webpages that contain the same snippet of text. For example, an entry on a speech by President Obama will appear on all webpages that include the same quote.

It also brings in relevant posts from blogs and other sources that talk about the current page so that you can discover their insights more easily, right next to the page they refer to.

Google Sidewiki is also available as a feature of Google Toolbar (for Firefox and Internet Explorer) and it will be soon available in Google Chrome and elsewhere too.

For developers, Sidewiki API are available to let anyone work freely with the content that's created in Sidewiki.

Read more...

Dell To Acquire Perot Systems For ~$3.9 Billion

Dell and Perot Systems have entered a definitive agreement for Dell to acquire Perot Systems in a transaction valued at approximately $3.9 billion. Terms of the agreement were approved yesterday by the boards of directors of both companies.

The acquisition will result in a compelling combination of two iconic information-technology brands. The expanded Dell will be even better positioned for immediate and long-term growth and efficiency driven by:

• Providing a broader range of IT services and solutions and optimizing how they’re delivered;
• Extending the reach of Perot Systems’ capabilities, including in the most dynamic customer segments, around the world; and,
• Supplying leading Dell computer systems to even more Perot Systems customers.

“ We consider Perot Systems to be a premium asset with great people that enhances our opportunities for immediate and long-term growth. This significantly expands Dell’s enterprise-solutions capabilities and makes Perot Systems’ strengths available to even more customers around the world. There will be efficiencies from combining the companies, but the acquisition makes such great sense because of the obvious ways our businesses complement each other.” said Michael Dell, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Dell.

Click here for more details.

Read more...

Google Opens New DoubleClick Ad Exchange To Help Advertisers And Publishers

Today, Google announced that it is opening the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange, a real-time marketplace for display advertising space. By establishing an open marketplace where prices are set in a real-time auction, the Ad Exchange enables display ad space to be allocated much more efficiently and easily across the web.

"Better technology can help make display advertising work better for all involved," said Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management at Google. "We're focused on growing the display advertising pie for everyone. The DoubleClick Ad Exchange is a major part of that goal."

The new DoubleClick Ad Exchange has been rebuilt using Google's technology and infrastructure. It contains a wide variety of key features that will help improve returns for advertisers and enable publishers to get the most value out of their online content.

Key benefits for sellers include:

• Real-time dynamic allocation to maximize yield. Publishers can automatically generate the highest return for every impression, using real-time data and bids to allocate ad space to the sales channel that pays the most at that second.
• Access to many more advertisers. The Ad Exchange offers publishers access to new buyers, including AdWords advertisers, bringing higher quality ads and more competition for ad space on their sites.
• Hassle-free payments managed by Google. It manages the billing and payments from networks so publishers get one monthly payment and minimize having to manage multiple relationships.
• Greater controls. Publishers can decide what advertisers, networks, ad formats, and bid types to allow.
• New easy to use interface with enhanced reporting. It uses the simplicity of Google's user design principles to help publishers easily find out how their sites are performing, to help them make the right decisions about their ad space.

Key benefits for buyers include:

• Access to more publishers and more ad space. Hundreds of thousands of AdSense publisher sites are now available on the Ad Exchange to Google-certified ad networks. And as more publishers join the Ad Exchange to take advantage of its yield management capabilities, more high quality inventory is being added all the time.
• Real-time bidder. The Ad Exchange has a new real-time bidder feature that allows buyers to use their own data, optimization and ad serving technologies to bid on their desired inventory on an impression-by-impression basis, choosing only the sites, audiences, or particular type of ad space they want to reach.
• New easy to use interface with enhanced buyer reporting capabilities. Redesigned reports are simple to use and understand, so buyers can easily see how their campaigns are performing to help them make the right decisions.
• More control and precision. Buyers control where their ads appear and don't appear. They can use frequency capping, pacing and other features to precisely control ad delivery.
• Centralized clearing system. Google makes all payments to publishers, reducing complexity with a single billing and payment point. Buyers benefit from managing one business relationship instead of many.
• A new API - Ad networks and agency networks will have access to an API which enables them to integrate their own functionality and systems when working with the Ad Exchange.

Features of the new Ad Exchange include a completely new interface; a "real-time bidding" feature to allow ad networks to use their own technology to bid on an impression-by-impression basis; a "dynamic allocation" system, which automatically generates online publishers the highest return for every impression by allocating ads to the highest-paying sales channel, based on real time data; more granular publisher and advertiser controls; payments and clearing managed by Google; and a new API to allow ad networks to extend the functionality of the Ad Exchange.

Below video gives a look at Google's plans to make display advertising more useful to users, advertisers, and publishers.

Additional information:

• More about today's announcement and Google's approach to display advertising
• Specific features of the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange
• About the DoubleClick Ad Exchange

Read more...

Google Acquires reCAPTCHA To Improve Books and Newspaper Scanning

Google today announced that they have acquired reCAPTCHA, a company that provides CAPTCHAs to help protect more than 100,000 websites from spam and fraud. reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows.

Since computers have trouble reading squiggly words like these, CAPTCHAs are designed to allow humans in but prevent malicious programs from scalping tickets or obtain millions of email accounts for spamming. But there’s a twist — the words in many of the CAPTCHAs provided by reCAPTCHA come from scanned archival newspapers and old books. Computers find it hard to recognize these words because the ink and paper have degraded over time, but by typing them in as a CAPTCHA, crowds teach computers to read the scanned text.

Many of us have seen such CAPTCHA while entering comments to some blogs or websites :

In this way, reCAPTCHA’s unique technology improves the process that converts scanned images into plain text, known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This technology also powers large scale text scanning projects like Google Books and Google News Archive Search. Having the text version of documents is important because plain text can be searched, easily rendered on mobile devices and displayed to visually impaired users.

Google will apply the technology within Google not only to increase fraud and spam protection for Google products but also to improve their books and newspaper scanning process.

You can see more details about reCAPTCHA here.

Read more...

Bing Introduced Visual Search

A study conducted by Microsoft Research shows that consumers can process results with images 20% faster than text only results.  So it’s clear that images play a big part in helping consumer’s with a variety of search activities. This makes Bing to add a new feature called Visual Search.

Visual Search is a new way to formulate and refine your search queries through imagery, particularly for sets of results that tend to be more structured. Simply go to www.bing.com/visualsearch and install Silverlight if you don’t have it already. What you’ll see is an amazing new visual search experience. Visual Search allows you to quickly scroll through the galleries or do a one-click refinement using the quick tabs on the left, which are specifically relevant to the type of results you are browsing through.

Below are few examples of visual search galleries and how to use them:

Product Search

When researching products online, research shows people want to gather as much information on the product before they make a purchase, images play a large role in this decision making process. For example, for holiday shoppers Visual Search can help you look for products from laptops to handbags. It’s like searching through a large online catalogue.

Books

Love Books? With Visual Search, you can search visually to find the best books faster. Again you narrow your results with 1-click filters such as author, format, or category to make it even easier to judge a book by its cover.

Cars

Looking for a new car? Sometime search feels like the classifieds, with all the long lists of results that make researching cars feel like a chore. Visually searching for cars on the other hand is like going to a massive virtual car showroom, you can search to your heart’s desire by simply clicking through the aisles. It saves a lot of time versus having to keep typing in all those search queries.

Visual Search helps to search faster with a more organized search experience.

Read more...